With a surge of mobile network traffic, in order to make better use of wireless channel resources, a data transmission device in the network will transmit one portion of downlink data to a target device directly, and transmit the other portion of downlink data to the target device via a shunting node device by way of shunting downlink data. For example, a long term evolution (briefly as LTE) network can shunt a portion of downlink data to other different frequency wireless networks, such as a wireless broadband (briefly as WiFi) and a different frequency LTE network.
Specifically, in the LTE network, an LTE base station transmits one portion of downlink data to a target user equipment (briefly as UE) via an LTE air-interface directly, and shunts the other portion of data to a wireless broadband access point (briefly as WiFi AP) and then transmits it to the target UE via a WiFi air-interface, or shunts the other portion of downlink data to a supporting user equipment (briefly as Supporting UE) via the LTE air-interface and then transmits it to the target UE via WiFi or other air-interfaces, and finally merges the two portions of shunted data at a target UE side; in a long term evolution macro base station (briefly as LTE Macro) network, an LTE Macro transmits one portion of its downlink data to a target UE via an LTE Macro air-interface directly, and shunts the other portion to a long term evolution pico base station (briefly as LTE Pico) and then transmits it to the target UE via an LTE Pico air-interface, and merges the two portions of shunted data at a target UE side.
During a process of implementing embodiments of the present invention, the inventors found that, in such a shunting architecture, a data transmission device has a problem in how to determine a rate at which data is shunted to a shunting node device, if the shunting rate is greater than the transmission rate of the shunting node device to a target UE, a congestion of data packets will be caused in the shunting node device, thereby resulting in increased data packet delays, even a packet loss; on the contrary, if the shunting rate is less than the transmission rate of the shunting node device to a target UE, a waste of resources will be caused in the shunting node device. According to the prior art, the data transmission device is unable to provide an appropriate shunted data rate for the shunting node device.